


lost on our way home

by sunshineinthestorm



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, set post-2x09
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-05-29 00:41:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6352021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshineinthestorm/pseuds/sunshineinthestorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Matt Murdock disappears without telling Foggy and leaves a few messages behind. And Foggy doesn't quite know how to feel about that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Blindness

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU in which Matt Murdock leaves messages for the people he cares about before packing up to fight The Hand because he’s 99% sure he’s going to die. (But is this even an AU? He might have done it. We don't know.) And also it takes him a lot longer to beat the Hand than like one or two days in this AU because otherwise the timeline for this fic won't work.
> 
> I have ideas for this to make it three chapters long, but only if anybody's interested, so let me know if you want to read more chapters of this!
> 
> Title from "C'mon" by Panic! At the Disco and Fun.

Foggy lasts until Christmas before coming to see Matt again.

When he bangs on the door, his best friend doesn’t answer.

Foggy tries not to be concerned. It’s 8 a.m., after all; he could be asleep.

That conviction lasts about five seconds before his chest gets tight, his hands start shaking, and he pulls his keys out of his satchel. Well — they’re mostly his keys, anyway. Foggy still remembers exactly what Matt had said when he’d given Foggy a spare key to his apartment, about three weeks after they’d put Fisk behind bars. “Just in case,” he’d said. “For emergencies,” he’d said. Foggy hadn’t answered, but he’d known exactly what kind of emergencies Matt had meant.

Foggy takes a deep, shuddering breath and pushes open the door.

His first instinct is to be relieved not to find any blood on the floor. Whenever Matt crawls in here, injured or dying, he usually drips blood onto the floor. (Oh, God, Foggy can’t believe this is his life now.) “Hey, Matt?” he calls out, his voice ringing around the apartment. “Are you there? Look, I know we said we shouldn’t be around each other right now, but it's Christmas and I just think… well… I kind of need to talk to you again, so you should get up and come out here!”

That’s when Foggy sees the flash drives resting on Matt’s coffee table, along with a sheet of legal paper from their stupid office. 

It’s one of the fancy pages. Karen had splurged, maybe a little unnecessarily, to get some nice stationery with a header that says _Nelson & Murdock: Attorneys at Law_, and the address to their firm typed out along the bottom of each sheet. She said it might get people to take them seriously, so Foggy had tried to only use it for extremely important documents. But of course Matt couldn’t have known which pages of paper were the expensive kind. He couldn’t have known.

Foggy knows that people's preconceived notions about blind people are often wrong. For example, Matt knows how to write. He wasn’t always blind, after all. He went to kindergarten with sight like everyone else, learned how to move his right hand to shape lines into letters and letters into words. That knowledge didn’t disappear along with his sight. Foggy knows this because Matt signs legal documents sometimes, after Foggy guides his hand to the right spot on the page. It’s just that Matt prefers to type, or dictate, because his handwriting never progressed past the level of a nine-year-old, and he’s never sure if he’s writing in a straight line or evenly spacing his words out.

There was a time, after Foggy realized that his best friend was the devil of Hell’s Kitchen, that he wondered if Matt was faking it. If he could see, then couldn’t he write as well? Was he just trying to play the part of a blind person convincingly? Had he been laughing every time Foggy led his hand to the right place to sign, laughing at how he was using his best friend to fake a disability?

Most of the words on the sheet of legal paper are typed out, unsurprisingly. _I left on December 23. If I’m not back by New Year's, listen to these. - Matt_

But then there’s a note, scrawled in the corner of the page, hard to read because part of it is written over the address at the bottom. His handwriting is awkward and blocky, his words squished together.

_I’m sorry, Foggy._

Of course Matt is blind. He might be able to see, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t blind. He hadn’t been laughing when Foggy had showed him where to sign. He’d probably been grateful.

There are Post-It notes stuck on each flash drive, each written on with that awkward, blocky handwriting. _Karen. Claire. Father Lantom._

_Foggy._

“Shit, Matt,” Foggy exhales, a long shuddering breath that rattles his chest. “What are you doing?”

* * *

Two days later, a knock on Matt’s door has Foggy springing to his feet before realizing that Matt wouldn’t need to knock to get into his own apartment. Not unless—"Foggy?“ Karen says, eyebrows shooting up. "Are you and Matt talking again?”

Foggy thinks of the flash drives, still on the table where Matt had left them, and gulps. “He’s, uh, out right now,” he says. “I’ll let you know when he gets back.”

Her eyes narrow. “Cut the bullshit, Foggy. What’s going on?”

“Nothing!” Foggy insists. “I think he’s getting Chinese. Well, I mean, that might mean something’s wrong. We both know he prefers Thai.”

Karen stares at him for one, two, three seconds, and then she shoulders her way into Matt’s apartment. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on,” she calls back to him, striding down Matt’s hallway, “but I know that Matt’s been lying to me pretty much since I met him, and now you are too. I want the truth, Fog—”

Her voice cuts off abruptly.

“Oh, shit,” Foggy mutters. Then, “Karen, I didn’t want you to see—”

“See what?” Karen demands from Matt’s living room, her voice shrill. “Franklin Nelson, you had better get in here right now!”

“Oh, shit,” he says again.

As soon as he turns the corner, Karen is standing three inches from his face, red-rimmed eyes and pink lipstick and all. “What is this, Foggy?” She gestures behind her. “What the hell is all this?”

Foggy wants to lie to her, but she’s basically an investigative-journalist-in-training by now. What’s the point? He sticks his hands into his pockets and won’t quite look her in the eye. “If Matt doesn’t come back,” he croaks, “then I’m pretty sure this is his version of a last will and testament.”

There’s silence for about fifteen seconds. Then, “You smell like shit,” Karen whispers. “How long have you been here?”

“Two days.”

“When was the last time you took a shower?”

He hesitates, just for a second, but he knows that his hair is a greasy mess. And once again, he doesn’t see the point in lying. “Two days ago.”

“When was the last time you ate something?”

Foggy’s eyes flick to the flash drives, just for an instant. “Two days ago.”

Karen inhales, her breath sounding like a knife to her chest. Foggy is familiar with the feeling. “ _Shit_ , Foggy,” she breathes. “What—what are the chances that he comes back?”

The knife in Foggy’s own chest explodes. “I don’t know, Karen, but he left fucking _flash drives_ for us! He told me he was sorry and then _disappeared_! I’d say the chances aren’t good!”

“What the hell, Foggy?” Karen cries, slapping her hand over her mouth at his words. She’s shaking. Foggy is too. “What the hell is going on with him?”

Foggy clenches his fists. “I can’t tell you,” he says, looking at the flash drive with Karen’s name on it. “But if he isn’t back in a week, I have a feeling that you’ll find out.”


	2. Fragmented

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I changed the timeline of this from how I'd originally written it (just a little) because I decided that I wanted the majority of this to take place after New Year's. It just works better that way. I've changed it in chapter one, if you want to go back and skim it over to see what I changed. 
> 
> Also, I finished watching season 2, and I decided that pretty much all of the events still work for this AU, except for the final conflict between Matt/Elektra/Stick/the Hand. Therefore, this AU follows canon up until that final conflict. Feel free to imagine it going however you'd like it to, as long as you recognize that it's slower and less public than canon. So Foggy and Karen have no idea what Daredevil/Matt is doing, or even if he's still alive.
> 
> And I got this out way earlier than I told people I would because I happened to have a lot of free time tonight! Yay! But I decided to post this ASAP instead of waiting, which means it's pretty unedited. If it's riddled with typos, I apologize.

Karen makes Foggy take care of himself while they wait for Matt to get back.

That's how she phrases it, too. "Until Matt gets back." Foggy thinks it's because she doesn't know what he knows about the other third of Nelson and Murdock (and Page). She can't fathom that a blind man could get into the kind of danger that would get himself killed. For her sake, Foggy pretends really hard that he can't fathom it either, and then he pretends that the act isn't destroying him. After all, she might even be right.

Foggy doesn't really believe that.

Either way, he does what she asks. He starts brushing his teeth again, takes a shower in Matt's bathroom and ends up smelling like him. Even cooks actual food instead of buying the shitty pizza Antonio Puccinelli makes around the corner. He thinks it makes Karen feel better — like if he's enough of a functional human being to make pasta, he must not be that worried. She's wrong, of course. He's so worried, he feels like throwing up pretty much every second of the day. It's just that he's used to it.

On New Year's Eve, Foggy steals Matt's champagne and drinks the whole bottle with Karen, acting like he expects Matt to walk in the door and complain any second. Karen's so surprised that Matt owns any alcohol that isn't shitty beer that she doesn't notice when Foggy starts crying halfway into his fourth glass. Or maybe she just doesn't comment on it. Foggy doesn't bother asking her.

Karen drinks her way through New Year's Day, emptying out the beers in Matt's fridge once they run out of champagne. Foggy cooks her food to balance out the alcohol and tries to keep her from noticing that he hasn't touched a drop since waking up this morning. He has a feeling, slashed into his gut with the same knife that's been lodged in his chest all week, that if Matt comes back today, he's going to need at least one of them to be sober in order to have any chance of survival.

In the end, it doesn't matter that Foggy stays sober, because Matt doesn't come back.

It hits Foggy at about 12:15 a.m., the crushing realization that his best friend is probably dead. He's in the middle of opening a beer bottle for Karen when he glances at the clock on the oven and it all becomes real. Suddenly, he isn't just camping out in Matt's apartment and using his shampoo and stealing his food. Not when Matt can't come back to make fun of him for it. No, now Foggy's just using a dead man's possessions for his own benefit.

 The beer bottle hits the floor and splinters apart, shards of glass skittering across the floor. Beer soaks into Foggy's socks, but he can't actually bring himself to care.

Karen tilts her head and points a finger at him, still more drunk than sober. "I thought you offered to open that for me so that _wouldn't_ happen."

For a moment, Foggy considers not telling Karen what he's just figured out. He thinks about letting her live in alcohol-induced bliss for a few more hours, just until the sun comes up and she can't avoid the truth anymore. But then his eyes flick instinctively to the flash drives on Matt's table, and Foggy realizes that he has to listen to Matt's message now. He has to learn what a man says to his best friend before going off to die. And that isn't something he ever wanted to find out.

"It's 12:15, Karen," he mumbles around the lump in his throat, wondering how he's ever going to breathe again. "It's January 2nd. Matt's… Matt's gone."

"What?" Karen makes this noise, this cross between a laugh and a cough, and smiles at him. "That can't be right. Matt will be back any second now."

Foggy glances down at the shattered beer bottle and shudders. "Look at the clock, Karen."

He sees her eyes hit the clock — _knows_ she's still sober enough to read the time — but then her head is shaking violently, wetness glistening in her eyes. "No," she snaps. "No, that clock is wrong. Matt's coming back."

Foggy crumples to his knees, careful not to land on any glass shards. (Matt spent years looking out for the people in Hell's Kitchen, protecting them, keeping them safe. Foggy isn't about to disgrace his efforts by getting himself hurt in Matt's own apartment.) "He's not, Karen," he says, looking at the glass in front of him like it's the only real thing in the world. "Not this time."

"But Matt—"

"Look, Karen, don't cut yourself on this glass, all right?" Foggy's voice comes out too harshly, harsher than the light of that god-awful neon sign that Matt never saw. That Matt will never see. "I'm going to — I'm going to go into his room. I know he wanted us to use those flash drives, I know he'd probably want us to listen to them as soon as possible, but I… I can't do it. Not tonight. You can take yours and listen to it whenever you want."

Slowly, achingly, Foggy gets up and picks his flash drive up off the kitchen table before meeting Karen's eyes. The god-awful neon sign turns her whole face into a labyrinth of blue-tinged shadows and sickly white highlights. He can't read her expression — but then, she probably can't read his either. It's not like either of them knows how to feel right now.

"Foggy," she begins, "are you _sure_ he's—"

"I'm sorry, Karen, I can't. Not tonight," Foggy repeats. And then he turns and goes.

But he doesn't cry yet. And he doesn't cry when he changes out of his beer-soaked pants into the spares that Karen had picked up for him. He doesn't cry when he sees Matt's bed, crisply made, untouched since he left. (Foggy couldn't bring himself to sleep anywhere other than the couch.) He doesn't cry when he turns to go to the bathroom and realizes that Matt's closet door is somehow still open, his meticulous Braille sorting system gleaming in the strands of light leaking in from the kitchen. But then he actually gets into the bathroom, and Matt's toothbrush is sitting innocently in its stand, just waiting for its owner to return and use it.

When he sees that, Foggy sinks to the ground and falls to pieces.

* * *

 

"H-h-hey, Foggy."

It's January 3rd, and Foggy's sitting on the floor of Matt's bedroom, leaning against the wall, nursing a glass of water like it's scotch because he wants to be sober the first time he hears what Matt has to say to him. He wants to react as logically as he can. And then he can get drunk off his ass before listening to it again.

He still isn't ready to hear the shudder that runs through Matt's voice as the recording starts. It's audio, not video, probably because Matt wasn't sure he'd be facing the camera perfectly, but it's still — it's still too much.

Foggy gets up, walks calmly to Matt's recycling bin, pulls out a few empty beer bottles, carries them outside the apartment building, balances them on top of a dumpster, and then grabs a nearby board and smashes them into dust. He might be screaming. He isn't sure.

As soon as he can't see the smallest remnant of a single bottle, he drops the board and returns to his spot against Matt's bedroom wall. Taking a deep breath, hoping he won't have to break anything else before finishing the recording at least once, Foggy rewinds the audio and presses play again.

"H-h-hey, Foggy.

"I'm not… I'm not sure how angry you're going to be while you're listening to this. I'm guessing probably pretty angry, but also maybe… well, I just want you to know, uh. I asked you to play this if I'm not back by New Year's, but if you listened to my instructions and you're still hearing this message — well, that doesn't mean I'm dead. Not for sure. I just wanted you to know some things, just in case. I guess I thought maybe if you hear this message, you won't hate me forever. Just… for a while. I'd understand if you hate me for a while. I just don't want you to hate me forever. Not when you're the first person since my father who liked me because I was Matt Murdock, not some" — Foggy hears Matt chuckle a little, a sound totally devoid of humor — "self-righteous vigilante in glorified spandex."

" _Fuck_ , Matt," Foggy croaks, slamming down on the pause button again. " _Fuck_ , you can't actually think that…" He looks at the water in his hands, makes a face, and downs the whole cup before going to refill it. By the time he sits back down, he's laughing too, and the sound is probably a lot more pathetic than Matt's chuckle on the voice recording. "I'm talking to a recording. You hear that, Matt? You see what you've reduced me to? I'm talking to a fucking _voice recording_ because _you're not fucking here_." He gulps down the second glass too, like it's a shot. Maybe doing this without alcohol was a bad idea. At least then he'd have an excuse for acting as crazy as the freaking Punisher. "But don't worry, Matt, I'm still gonna let you finish."

He presses play, which means he gets to hear Matt's breath shudder again before he continues.

"The worst part is, I'm leaving these flash drives on my own kitchen table. You know what that means, right? It means that I'm convinced that you're going to find them, if it comes to that. I have no doubt that you came to my apartment before the end of the year — probably on like, Christmas, so you'd have an excuse for stopping by — and that you were worried enough when I didn't answer the door that you used your key and went inside. God, Foggy, I'm _so sure_ about that. And I didn't even visit you in the hospital after you got hurt."

There's a pause, and Foggy thinks for one awful second that that's all Matt has to say. But his voice starts again a moment later.

"God, did you know that I was even _there_? In the hospital. I tried to save lives when the Hand attacked. I don't know how many would have died if I hadn't been there, but… but I do know that I didn't save everyone. I never save everyone. And I didn't come visit you. I was going to, but I — I didn't know what to say. I didn't know if I would be able to fix things between us. I didn't know if you _wanted_ to fix things between us, right then, even though — like I said — I knew you'd at least _try_. Eventually. But I didn't know if you were ready to talk right then. But that isn't an excuse.

"I told myself it'd be easier for you, too, if I didn't come by. I thought maybe that if I died while we still weren't speaking to each other, then you might feel a little better. You'd feel less bad about hating me for breaking the promise I made you. But I'm pretty sure I knew that was a lie even while I told it to myself.

"God, I'm so sorry, Foggy. I'm so sorry."

Matt stutters over the words a little, but Foggy knows him well enough to know that it isn't because of insincerity. If anything, it's because he's _too_ sincere, too desperate for Foggy to believe him. It makes Foggy want to throw things.

"I've been such a shitty friend, ever since I started this whole thing and didn't tell you about it. I wish I had been more honest with you, especially since you're the person whose opinion I care about most, but I — I just didn't want you to get caught up in all of this. I was hoping that you wouldn't ever have to see me beaten half to death like Claire has, or — honestly, I also didn't want you to see me as someone willing to go outside the bounds of the law to help other people. _Nelson & Murdock_ was this helpless, amazing, ideological dream we both had, and I didn't want to spoil that for you or for myself. I was so selfish. And it didn't work, anyway, did it?"

Matt takes a long, slow, deep breath, and then says, "I know that I promised you that I'd be careful, that I wouldn't get hurt. If I really am dead, I'm sorry that I broke that promise. I'm sorry I broke a lot of things about us. And I'm sorry that I'm leaving you to deal with the fallout of all this. All the recordings I left… I know you'll get them to the people I left them for, but I'm sorry I'm making you do that. And I… I told Karen that I'm Daredevil in the recording I made her. I'm sure you probably figured that I would. I'm sorry I didn't tell her before I left. Now you'll have to try to answer all her questions, and that isn't fair to you. None of this is fair to you.

"Damn it, Foggy, you deserve better friends than me. Maybe you'll get them, if I'm not around."

Foggy can tell that Matt is crying now — or, well, he was crying when he recorded this part, anyway. There's something about the pauses between his sentences, the complete absence of other sounds, that means Matt is carefully pretending that he isn't crying. Foggy can just _tell_.

"I wish I could end this recording knowing that I've said everything I want to say to you, that I could die tomorrow and it wouldn't matter because I made this. But the truth is, I should have just come to see you at the hospital that day. Only you can tell me if I've said everything I needed to say, but I was too scared to just _ask you_ , so here we are. I'm just hoping that I'm still alive, and you'll get a chance to yell at me for putting you through this shit. But i-if I'm not… If I'm not, then I'm sorry. You're the best friend I've ever had, with the biggest heart and the most talent of any lawyer I know, and I just hope that if I'm dead, I took the Hand down with me. That way, you'll have a chance to live a long time and be ridiculously happy. You deserve that much. You deserve a lot more than that. Good luck with everything, Foggy.

"Whatever happens, just know that I've never been happier than when we were two dumbass kids in law school, learning Spanish and Punjabi because of the girls we met and vowing to work together as Avocados at Law."

Matt laughs a little, a choked and broken sound, and then the recording cuts off.


	3. Deliverance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extending this to four parts because, as usual, I am incapable of guesstimating the correct length of my stories.

A large part of Foggy wants to listen to the recordings Matt left for everyone else, both because he wants to hear more words in Matt's voice and because he has a selfish curiosity about what Matt had to say to the other people he loves — _loved_. But then Karen knocks on the door to Matt's bedroom and sinks onto the floor next to Foggy, eyes redder than usual and lips shaking.

"S-so," she says. "Matt's Daredevil."

Foggy nods, trying not to speak, trying not to look at Karen, as if that will keep both of them from falling apart again.

"It makes sense," she says, and there's a hint of hopeless laughter in her voice, the same kind that Foggy had stuttered out while listening to Matt. "God, it makes so much sense. And with all my investigations, I never figured it out."

"You shouldn't worry about that," he says, voice hard and emotionless. "He was blind, Karen. No one would have figured it out."

She nods, looks down at her knees. "Did you?"

"Hardly. No, I found him in costume, half-dead in his apartment. More than half-dead, honestly. That was the night before I told you he was in a car accident."

She laughs again, hollow. "I knew that was a lie. And the other things you told me about him? The alcoholism—"

"Matt didn't want you to know." Foggy looks down at the empty glass in his hands, observes the way it bends the light, distorts the shape of his foot. "He thought you got into enough danger as it was."

"He was probably right." She pauses. "So if he's told me now…"

"Yeah." The word shakes free of Foggy without his permission, harsh in the air. "He probably thought his secret identity wouldn't matter anymore. That knowing it couldn't hurt you anymore."

"Right."

Karen twists her flash drive in her hands over and over, twirling it between her fingers and catching the ends on her nails. Foggy thinks they might be finished talking. She might decide to get up and leave, and if she's upset enough, he might not ever see her again. She might destroy her old life completely and do her best to build up a new one. He wouldn't blame her.

But then she exhales suddenly, a quick _whoosh_ , and her breath is still hanging suspended between them when she says, "I told him he wasn't a hero."

"Wha—?" Foggy shakes his head, like there's water stuck in his ears and it's mangling Karen's words. "When?"

"At the courthouse," she says, and then she stops turning the flash drive over and clenches it in her right palm instead, fingers squeezed so tightly that her knuckles whiten. "I was pissed at him because I felt like he never had time for us anymore, you know? I thought he was an alcoholic, or an addict, or just a lazy asshole who couldn't be bothered to help his friends, and I thought that he'd gotten tired of me and slept with another woman before we'd even gone on a second date, and I thought that he didn't _care_ about the shit we were facing, and I yelled at him and I — I don't even remember everything I said to him. But I remember telling him that Hell's Kitchen might need heroes, but he wasn't one of them. And he just stood there and _listened_ , and this entire time he's been risking his life to save this fucked-up city, and I told him he wasn't a hero and he just _LISTENED,_ Foggy!"

She sobs, broken and horrified, and there's nothing Foggy can do except reach out and gently pry Karen's fingers apart. The flash drive's left angry red indentations on the skin of her palm, but he doesn't think she notices.

"You didn't know, Karen," he says carefully. "You didn't do anything wrong. We were all going through shit. You couldn't have known that Matt was going through twice as much of it as the rest of us."

Karen just swallows hard and can't quite look at him. "He saved my life before he even knew me. I mean, I'd already known that you and Matt saved my life by getting me out of jail, but he — he saved my life literally too, and afterwards, he was _bleeding_ , Foggy. He was spitting blood into the rain, and he was bleeding, and limping, and I don't even know if I thanked him. And all the shit I've been saying about how vigilantes should act, and how far they should go, and how much more they should be doing… I probably just reminded him of every time he'd failed to save someone, or stop someone. He's done so fucking _much_ , Foggy. Why didn't I say that more? Why didn't I ever tell him how fucking grateful I was that at least someone like Daredevil was trying to _do something_? Why didn't I ever tell him that I think Daredevil is a fucking hero?"

Foggy twirls the glass in his fingers. "If it helps," he says quietly, "I don't think Matt saw Daredevil as a hero either."

The flash drive slips out of Karen's fingers and clatters onto the floor. "That really doesn't help at all," she murmurs.

Foggy sets his glass down and looks her straight in the eyes. "No," he agrees. "I didn't think it would."

* * *

 

Eventually, hours later, Foggy works up the strength to tell her about how he'd treated Matt terribly as well, and how it was even worse because he'd _known_ that Matt was going through twice as much shit as the rest of them and he'd done it anyway. It's not that Foggy thinks he was _wrong,_ exactly, about the things he'd said to Matt. Most of them were still true. It's just that the things he said to Matt were the kind of things friends say to each other when they first realize that their friends aren't the idealized, infallible beings that they'd always kind of relied on their friends to be. When that happens, friends bite out the harsh, honest truths that they'd suppressed before, and it hurts like hell. But then they talk about it, and they agree not to try to be infallible any longer, or to try to force the other person to be infallible, and the friendship gets repaired. That's how it works. It just takes a little time.

The problem is, Matt and Foggy didn't get that time, and Foggy's spent the last two weeks beating himself up for it.

"He wasn't mad at you, Foggy," Karen reminds him. "He didn't hate you for it. He understood."

Like that _helps._

Foggy looks down at his hands. "What would you say?" he says — out loud, although he isn't sure whether he's talking to Karen or to himself. "If you thought you were going to die, and you had one last chance to leave a message for the people you loved? What would you tell them?"

 Karen flinches, jerks her legs away from him without really meaning to, and Foggy comes to the sudden, sinking realization that Karen's keeping a secret from him too, a secret almost as monumental as Matt's was. But he doesn't want to dwell on it. He _can't_ dwell on it. Not right now. Not even when Karen picks at the lint on her stockings and mutters, "The truth."

So instead, he just nods. "Me too," he says quietly.

They stare at the floor until the sun goes down.

* * *

The next day, Karen starts to get anxious and fretful, asks Foggy at least six times if they should plan a funeral service. Every time, Foggy clenches his fingers around the flash drive in his pocket and shakes his head. "If Matt wanted a funeral," he tells her, "he would have said so. Besides, it just feels wrong until we know for sure."

But it's been over two weeks, and both of them are pretty sure.

Karen goes back to her apartment before the end of the week. Foggy thinks that it freaks her out, being in the place that Matt used to live. Honestly, it kind of freaks him out too. But he can't bring himself to leave. He gets Karen to bring him more of his clothes and random useful crap from his apartment — including his own shampoo, because Foggy is getting really freaking tired of smelling like Matt — and sits on the floor of Matt's apartment for hours at a time, alone with a beer and the buzz of the electrical lights, imagining how loud the buzz must have been to Matt's ears.

But then it's Sunday, and Foggy is wondering how often Matt slipped into the back row of a Catholic mass when he remembers the other two flash drives on Matt's kitchen table, and the guilt fills him up like the pulsing ache of his heartbeat in his ears. He scoops up the flash drive labeled _Father Lantom_ , throws on a suit jacket that doesn't match his pants, and runs from his own personal hell into what might have been Matt's only source of salvation.

The Sunday morning mass is still going on when Foggy arrives, which he only realizes when he stumbles through the doors and gets judgmental looks from a few people in the last two pews. He's tempted to turn around and go right back out, but Father Lantom looks up at him and makes eye contact before he can leave, and then Foggy feels trapped. So he slides into a seat at the end of the last row, listens to every word of the service, and wonders if it made Matt feel better, having at least one thing in his life that he was pretty sure was stable.

When mass ends and the congregation begins filing out of the church, Foggy starts to worry about finding Father Lantom within the crowd of people. But after a few minutes, it turns out that he shouldn't have been concerned, because Father Lantom finds him.

"You're Matt's friend," he says behind him, making Foggy jump. "You came to Grotto's funeral."

Foggy blinks. "You remember?"

"When only three people come to a man's funeral, it's hard not to," Father Lantom remarks. "What made you come alone today?"

The flash drive feels like an iron anvil in Foggy's pocket. He pulls it out with quivering fingers and holds it up until Matt's priest takes it from him. The scent of incense tastes heavy in Foggy's mouth, strangling the words that try to wrestle their way out of the pit in his stomach. Father Lantom has to speak first. "Why are you giving me this?"

The pit in Foggy's stomach threatens to swallow him whole. "Matt wanted you to have it," he says carefully, "if he didn't come back in time."

"Come back?"

"He… he's been missing for two weeks now, Father Lantom."

Father Lantom's grip tightens around the flash drive in his hand, but he shows no other sign of surprise. "And you haven't filed a report with the police yet?"

Foggy fiddles with a button on his suit. "It's not the kind of missing-persons case that the police are equipped to handle," he says carefully. "I always figured you knew."

His sigh sounds as old as the Catholic Church itself. "I did," he admits. "But I always prayed he would get out before it came to this."

After that, he stays silent for so long, looking down at the flash drive peeking out from between his thumb and index finger, that Foggy wonders if he was supposed to respond. But before he can, Father Lantom looks back up, catches his eyes, and holds them hostage. "I've held many funeral services since my ordination," he says. "Performed countless sacraments of the Anointing of the Sick on people's deathbeds. Even served on death row for several years. I've seen my fair share of deaths, and I can't say that Matt's is the most unexpected, or the youngest, or the least deserved, or the most painful. But his might leave the largest hole in people's lives. And I…" He pauses, considers his next words as carefully as if he's giving a homily. Foggy wonders if maybe he is. "I've always believed that God sends us angels when we need them most, to counteract the demons that find their way here too. The angels come to us in the form of humans, just as demons do, and they're far from perfect. They don't always make the right decisions, or do as much as we demand of them. But ever since he lost his sight and his father and didn't shatter under that burden, I'd always thought that, given enough time, Matt Murdock might become one of them."

Rather than struggle under the weight of those words, Foggy tries to smile. "The devil of Hell's Kitchen? An angel?"

"Humans are the ones who called him a devil," Father Lantom reminds him. "None of us knows how God might have named him."

Foggy swallows hard, feeling the pit in his stomach drop closer to his knees. "Father—"

"Do you have any other flash drives to deliver today?"

Foggy stuffs his still-shaking, ceaselessly-shaking hands back into his pockets and nods.

"Then deliver them," he advises. "I've just learned that I have some parish business to attend to." He glances at the flash drive again, and Foggy sees the weight of a lifetime of witnessing deaths cloud his eyes. "And — your name is Foggy, correct?"

He nods.

"I always offered an open door and a fresh cup of coffee to Matt whenever he needed it. I'd like to give the same offer to you, Foggy."

He swallows. "I'm not Catholic."

Father Lantom just looks at him. "I don't think God would mind."

The smell of incense, the candle smoke, Father Lantom's speech, are all smothering him. Foggy barely manages to choke out a "we'll see" before turning around and fleeing the church.

He calls Claire on his way back to Matt's apartment, just to check that she hasn't left town yet. When she doesn't pick up, Foggy's throat tightens until he thinks he might actually suffocate for real.

Matt never knew, but Foggy and Claire exchanged numbers after the first time he had to call her to stitch Matt up, just in case there was a time Matt wasn't able to call her himself. Claire had promised him that she would always answer the phone, no matter what time it was.

"Part of my ER nurse training," she'd told him. "Even when I'm not on call, I'm always on edge. You never know when there will be an emergency."

Her not picking up is about as big of an emergency as Foggy can imagine.

He calls Karen next, heart climbing into his throat. _She_ picks up at least, and Foggy remembers to thank God, since Matt can't. "Grab Claire's flash drive from Matt's apartment," he tells her, slightly breathless from running to the curb to hail a taxi. "I forgot to get it earlier. Then meet me at her apartment, and… bring a weapon. Just in case."

He can practically hear her eyebrows furrow over the telephone. "Claire?"

"Oh, fuck, you don't know," Foggy pants, sliding into the backseat of a cab before it's even come to a complete stop. "She's the one who saved Matt's life on a regular basis."

"Where to?" the driver asks, just as Karen demands the same thing, and Foggy relays the address to both of them with a single breath. They both say "Got it" at almost the same time, in completely different tones of voice, and he hangs up the phone and tries to calm down.

It doesn't work.

Foggy nearly has a panic attack at three different stoplights on his way to Claire's apartment. He should have known that if the Hand took down Matt, then they could have easily figured out who he was — hell, they might have already known. Everyone connected to Matt has probably been in danger ever since his disappearance. And Claire more than anyone else, since she's saved Matt's life so many times. He's sure plenty of criminals have vendettas against her, for helping Matt last as long as he did. If Foggy hadn't been so fucking selfish — if he hadn't hoarded those flash drives like it would bring Matt back — then he might have warned Claire in time. If she's in trouble, if she's dead too, then it's his fault.

He almost forgets to pay the driver before stumbling out of the taxi and racing up to Claire's apartment building. A string of half-assed lies and a lucky press of a button get him admitted inside, and he's flying up the stairs before he can think about how dangerous it is to be running toward the place where Claire might have died.

Maybe he shouldn't have called Karen and asked her to meet him here. But he's ramming his fist against Claire's door before he can worry about that too much, hitting it as hard as he'd banged on Matt's door on Christmas morning. "Claire!" he shouts, not caring about whether the neighbors might complain. "Claire, are you home? _Claire, open the fucking door!_ "

" _ONE FUCKING SECOND, JESUS!_ " he hears, the voice muffled but unmistakably belonging to Claire, and a fraction of the suffocating weight on his chest lifts.

She opens the door just a crack, eyes narrowed and suspicious, but when she sees that it's Foggy, her eyebrows straighten out completely. Foggy doesn't think he's ever seen her relax this much, but the expression on her face is pure gratitude. "Thank God," she breathes, and — Foggy doesn't get it. They barely even know each other. She shouldn't seem this relieved to see him. Then she opens the door the rest of the way, and—

Dimly, he hears Claire say something along the lines of, "If you didn't come by in the next day, I think I might have had to use restraints to keep him from trying to find you." The words don't register.

Foggy's legs crumple, and he sags against the doorframe, disbelief and amazement warring for dominance in his lungs. He stops feeling like he's suffocating. Instead, he forgets how to breathe.

" _Matt?_ "

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr:  
> main blog: [actuallymollyweasley](http://actuallymollyweasley.tumblr.com)  
> teen wolf blog: [stilestilikeslydia](http://stilestilikeslydia.tumblr.com)  
> misc. tv and film blog: [reyes-rockets](http://reyes-rockets.tumblr.com)


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